


In the End You Will Always Kneel

by Dillian



Category: Iron Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor - All Media Types
Genre: And Very Much of a Victim-Loki, Dark Nick Fury, Dark Tony Stark, Dom/sub, Domination, F/M, From in between the aforementioned movies and Age of Ultron, M/M, Or to be more accurate canon-divergent, Post-Avengers (2012), Post-Iron Man 3, Post-Thor: The Dark World, Pre-Avengers Age of Ultron, Rape/Non-con Elements, Stockholm Syndrome, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Yeah there is some canon-divergence here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-29
Updated: 2015-02-08
Packaged: 2018-03-04 05:00:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2953253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dillian/pseuds/Dillian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><b>Projection:</b>  A psychological theory in which it is suggested that humans will defend themselves against unpleasant impulses by denying their existence in themselves, and attributing them to others.  (Thank you, Wikipedia)</p><p>I am not the first to suggest that when Loki was so eager to tell all those people that <i>they</i> wanted to kneel and be dominated, he might have been talking more about himself.  I am not the first person to write a story about that sort of thing happening...  The sort of thing I mean here, being a relationship of brutality, in which Tony Stark dominates and takes advantage of an imprisoned God of Chaos.  ...I'm writing the story anyway though, and I don't care how redundant it is to stories other people have written before me.  They say here are only 24 plots in the world, so sooner or later we all have to repeat one of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Warm Light for all Mankind to Share

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “It burns you to come so close. To have the Tesseract, to have power, unlimited power. And for what? A warm light for all mankind to share, and then to be reminded what real power is.”  
> – Loki Laufeyson

“Is not this simpler? Is this not your natural state? It's the unspoken truth of humanity, that you crave subjugation. The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life's joy in a mad scramble for power, for identity. You were made to be ruled. In the end, you will always kneel.”  
– Loki Laufeyson

**_The Avengers_ , _Iron Man_ , and _Thor_ , and all situations and characters thereof, belong strictly and solely to Marvel Comics. This is a fan-work, meant for enjoyment only, and not for any material profit.**

They say the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, but that’s not true. The road to… I don’t know, Heaven? If there is a Heaven? If there’s anyone on this misbegotten blue marble who deserves a Heaven, lord knows I’ve never met anyone? That’s the road that’s paved with _good_ intentions. The road to Hell is paved with all the lies you’ve told yourself about your intentions (but you know perfectly well they aren’t true).

Me and that thing with Loki, for instance, there’s a good example: And I’m just sitting at home one night, I’m chilling. This was before I started work on the Model 1.0. This was way back, I didn’t even have the _plans_ for the 1.0 yet. Back then? Hell, I thought I was through with armor and shit back then. I thought it would be me and Pepper together forever. And the house with the yard, and the 2.5 kids… Barring a few modifications of course, because these would be Stark-kids, we weren’t gonna raise them just like everybody else, but yeah. Just me and Pepper, and the house with the picket fence and love, love, love that makes the world go round.

…Yeah, January I think it was, February maybe. And I’d had my surgery, and I was starting to feel like myself again. Pepper was still a little weak from what they had to do to her to get the Extremis stuff out, but she _said_ she was fine again. She got really pissed if I implied that I thought she might not be fine, and she was back at work, and I told Happy be sure and keep a special eye out for her (which, in retrospect, might have been a mistake). And we were there in our nice little (big) house together. It was the birds and the bees with us, and happily ever after, and then one night I get this call from Fury.

“Hey Stark get over here,” he says. “I’ve got something you want to see.” Something _you_ want to see, you understand. Fury knows how to motivate us. Natasha responds to a call to orders, Cap always wants to believe he’s following the flag, Bruce likes it if you appeal to the scientist, and as for me? “I’ve got something you _want_ to see,” Fury says, like the snake in the garden, curled around the Tree of Knowledge. “Come here, Adam, you’ll want to see this. Come here and bite on this apple and then you’ll know _everything_.”

And just like a naked ape in a garden, there I went. Quinjet came and got me, took me to a Black Site I didn’t even know existed. It’s out in international waters. I could tell you the coordinates, but then I’d have to kill you… LOL, right? But no. I mean it. That’s all you’re going to hear about the place from me.

But what happened there? Jesus, _what happened there_? That I’m going to talk about, because I have to talk about it. Because I can’t get the images out of my mind, see? Because those nights when a full bottle of Jack isn’t enough to get me to sleep, the nights when I used to see the portal and the Chitauri… And god, what a nightmare that was, just looking back, and I went up there, I shot up as fast as the Mark VII would go, took that bomb right into the portal… I _saw_ the explosion. Thing detonated just as I was leaving, right before the portal closed, and I saw it… A bright light, just like they say. Just like Hiroshima, like Fat Man and Little Boy, and just like with that, you could imagine the suffering it was bringing. That used to be what I dreamed about, was all those Chitauri. Killers? No, they were just _soldiers_ , just like our men, and they were just following orders, and there beyond the portal? We took out all of it, the city, and the civilians, and god only knows what else. You remember how easily those guys died, right? And I was the one who dropped the bomb and killed them. I carried death right into the heart of a civilization, and I left it there, and that’s what I used to dream about. Now I dream about what happened to Loki.

That’s why I’ve got to talk about it, see. Because I was crazy before, but now I’m double-crazy. I’m _quadruple-crazy,_ a whole sackful of cats (in Bruce’s epic phrasing), and if I don’t talk about it, to somebody… I don’t know what I’ll do if I don’t get this thing off my chest to someone. You’ll listen, right?

…February. It was February. You know how we haven’t been getting so much rain lately, but we caught a tropical storm somewhere over the Pacific. Made the Quinjet pitch some, made me feel a little nauseous. “Global warming,” Fury said. “That’s what causes this. Storms out of season; SHIELD’s got a protocol, but we’re not using it yet…”

I’m taking a long time to tell this story, aren’t I? Too long, but bear with me, if I don’t tell you the whole thing I’m going to freeze up and I won’t be able to tell any of it.

…So we were over the ocean. In that damn tropical storm, Quinjet pitching around like fuck. Finally, and it felt like the darkest part of the night, that’s when you could see the lights up ahead… As in you could _barely_ see them. You know how SHIELD camouflages things, right? I’m not going to go into the details.

We land… And it was pitch dark. Also there was water rolling onto the… You know, there was rain and ocean water mixing, we were getting all wet, but you know how Fury is. He doesn’t mind those things, he expects everybody else to be the same way. And we went inside, went through the usual bureaucratic rigmarole. We get to this cell finally… A Hulk-containment unit, it was, only repurposed. 

There inside was Loki, and you remember how he was during the invasion, don’t you? You’ve seen the studies: His brother’s strength is Hulk-grade, and we both saw what it looked like when the two of them went up against each other. Loki’s at least as strong as his brother. …Or he was. …Or he should have been. You remember it took Asgardian shackles to hold him the other time.

I’m like, “How did you pen Baby Brother?”

Fury’s like, “Latverian tech…” Because everybody knows Doom’s found a million ways to fuse dark magic with technology.

So I ask him, “You did business with Doom?” Because, you know, I want to know who all is in on this. He didn’t of course, SHIELD’s not that corrupt. This was some shit he got on the black market. He let me look at it afterward. A lot of the Model 1.0 came from there, and the 1.1, even more so. I can’t let you see that one, it’s still under copyright, but you can see the specs for the 1.0 if you want.

…Hell, you’re a friend. You want to see the 1.1? Not like I have to worry about _you_ blabbing any of it.

…So Loki was sitting there, like I said. And Jesus Christ, he looked exactly like something the cat dragged in. …No, he looked like what the cat hacked up on the carpet, because no cat in its right mind would drag something that looked like that. And the _dirt,_ and his hair was all tangled, and the way his clothes were all in rags. And he looks up at us… His smile? His bastard-smile, like he’s the winner here, no matter what we might think, and I flashed on the helicarrier that night, and how he pretended to let us catch him.

And I say to Fury, “How sure are you that it’s _you_ who have caught _him_?”

We had, by the way. I won’t go into details which I know you wouldn’t understand, but that Latverian tech is magic-proof. What’s more it _retards_ magic. Loki could still do little spells, but not many of them, and it took a lot out of him every time he did them.

Fury was like, “The only power he’s got right now is the power of his mind,” and it was the power of his mind that we wanted to crack. “He hates Asgard,” Fury told me. “You can bet if anybody knows all the ins and outs of how to get in there, how to take it all down…”

And I was like, “Thor’s on our side, and Asgard is…” Is neutral, I was going to say, Asgard is neutral, but of course even while I was saying it, I knew that wasn’t going to matter to SHIELD. Standard defense strategy: Know how to take down the neutrals, especially the powerful neutrals, because you never know if you’re going to need to.

I wouldn’t have signed on for that though. We’ve got the Hulk. And, without going into details, I can at guarantee you, the 1.1 is Hulk-proof, and if it’s Hulk-proof, that means it’s Thor-proof as well. And if necessary we can call on Doom… Whatever else he is, he’s pro-Earth, or at any rate, pro-Latveria, and between him and me, I’m not worried about defending this planet. Fury wanted the info for _offensive_ purposes, of course; SHIELD and their machinations. He knew I wouldn’t have any part of that though, so he gave me the line he knew would work on me:

“This is our chance to find out what makes Asgard work,” he says. “To find the source of their power...”

Yeah, me and Adam in the Garden of Eden, and neither of us able to resist the chance to _know_ a little bit more.


	2. Take Away the Armor, and What Are You?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve Rogers: “Big man in a suit of armor. Take that away and what are you?”  
> Tony Stark: “A genius-billionaire-playboy-philanthropist.”  
> – _The Avengers_ (2012)

Okay, I went to this black site, like I was telling you? And I saw Loki there, and he looked like shit. Blue shit… Remember when Thor told us his brother was a Frost Giant? That’s a thing. It’s some kind of Asgardian monster. And it’s his magic that makes him look like he normally looks, strip off the magic and you strip off the disguise. Or, strip off part of the magic, like we did with those Doom-tech shackles, and you strip off part of it…

Best way I can explain it: You remember when we caught him in Stuttgart? He had his full-on Reindeer Games suit on, helmet, and that gold armor of his and everything. Did you see the footage from when that stuff disappeared? I did. There’s this thing he did, one minute he was Reindeer Games, the next he was just Loki, and there was like a shimmer when he changed. This was like that, only he’d lost control of it. Like watching a TV, and it can’t stay on one channel. One minute you’re watching _Gilligan’s Island,_ the next minute it’s _Casa Erotica_. That’s how Loki was, like he’d be Loki, then he’d blur a little. It was like normal-Loki, superimposed over blue-Loki, like seeing both of them at the same time. Weirdest fuckin’ thing you ever saw, but at least his body temperature stayed normal the whole time. That was a good thing for me, considering.

And we were going to break him, right? I don’t know whose idea it was, or I do. It wasn’t my idea, or Fury’s. It was a SHIELD idea. Some bureaucrat, or a functionary, came up with this idea: “Fuck Loki hard,” they said, and he will break into a million pieces and tell you everything.”

“Fuck Loki hard.” Wrap your mind around that for a minute. You take a guy… He’s pretty much on his honeymoon, with the only woman he’s ever loved… Ever really loved. Mom doesn’t count. She died before I was old enough to remember her. …You take a guy, and his heart’s still in Malibu (and his brain’s still in Pepper Potts’ warm, warm bed, and he wishes the rest of him was too). You tell him, “See there? There’s your enemy, that you took down a year ago. _Now go fuck him._ ” Says something about me that Fury would think that I’d even do the job. Says more about me that I said yes, though.

I didn’t say yes at first. Once I found out what he wanted? “Fuck that,” I told Fury, “find yourself another guy.”

And he came right back at me with, “Fine, I’ll get Banner,” but we both knew he couldn’t. Bruce could bring the monster, and he could bring the scientist. I was the only one who could bring them together, see? I could bring them together way better than…

I don’t think Fury understood how _well_ I could do the job at first. “It’s just fucking,” he said. “How much of that have you done?” And I thought of all the beds I’ve been in and out of over the years, and Fury said, “Men too, lots of them. I’ve seen your file.”

 _Seen_ it? I think he _wrote_ it. 

And I thought about the men I’ve been with. You know me. I’m what you might call an equal-opportunity lover… “Lover,” you understand. Because I still thought of myself as a lover. I’ve had men, and I’ve had women. If someone was attractive, or if they interested me, I was pretty well up for the job, anytime, anywhere. But Loki wasn’t attractive to me, and he didn’t interest me…

No, that’s a lie. He didn’t interest me like a _human_ interests me… Like a person, I mean, because it wasn’t the Frost Giant thing that was turning me off. Loki was an enemy. There were no warm-and-fuzzy vibes, no urge to get with the cuddling. But he interested me, because he was a _problem_. He was a question I hadn’t answered yet, a riddle, and I didn’t know the solution. Oh, he _interested_ me all right. You remember when I built the Mark I? …Or no, remember when I figured out what I could use for a core for the arc reactor? When the palladium wasn’t working, and I needed a new element, remember that? Day turned to night, and night turned to day, and I was going through all Dad’s things, and I didn’t notice any of it. There was just me and the problem, until it was solved, remember? That’s what Loki was to me, he was that kind of problem. And I looked at him, I felt the tingle in my fingers, only it’s not in your fingers really, it’s in your _brain_. I saw him, and I wanted to tinker, and if SHIELD said fuck him hard?

You can _make_ yourself fuck someone. You can make yourself hit them, hit them over and over again, and there’s blood at the side of their mouth, but it doesn’t register. And you don’t even see the defiance in their eyes any more, it just doesn’t even register, there’s just the problem, like banging a wrench against a nut, to make it loosen up.

Loki was that to me. He was the nut that wanted to stay on there. Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey, only with humans… With _Frost Giants_ , first you have to figure out which way’s right, and which way’s left, and why aren’t you seeing results yet, is he just on that tight, or are you going the wrong way?

And I’d go in there. “Kneel,” I’d say…

Dramatic dialogue? Jesus, you have _no_ idea. Half the time I didn’t know where that shit came from. It was cheap porno movies I’d seen with dominatrixes in them, it was Shakespeare in the Park, because you know, Asgard, and that’s how they talk there.

“Kneel,” I’d say. “This time you will kneel.” And of course he wouldn’t, and so I’d hit him. And he’d mouth out some cheap defiance, with the blood already running. I’ll tell you, you barely had to tap on that guy’s nose and it would be bleeding.

He figured out really quick that it was the shackles that were making me strong enough to do it, and that’s what he’d taunt me with. “Big, brave Iron Man,” he’d say. “Take these off, let me see what Earth’s Mightiest Hero can do.”

And I wasn’t being Iron Man at the time, at least I didn’t think I was. Remember the Clean Slate Initiative? I really thought you could take the man out of the can, back then. Just blow up some old hardware, wa-la, you’re new and fresh and everything’s different. And if I’d let it, it really would have gotten to me, what he was saying, because of course he was hitting me, right where I was vulnerable. Because I went in there thinking I _wasn’t_ Iron Man, but that’s when I learned different. Because I could see that all those shackles were, was another suit of armor, another way of protecting the weak little man inside me, who isn’t even Tony Stark, he’s too small, too pathetic.

You don’t _let_ a problem get to you like that, though. Like, all the times something’s looked impossible in my life? Like, prep school, and I was ten, and everyone around me was 14 or 15. You think nobody ever taunted me then? Where would I have been if I’d let that stop me? If I’d turned tail and run, rolled up in a ball, like a quivering mass of jelly and started crying?

“Big man,” Loki said, “the so-brave ‘Iron Man.’”

“You’re the one in shackles,” I said. “That’s kind of a pattern for you, isn’t it? These are weaker than your brother’s. Stand up, take a swing at me if you want to.”

Those shackles, by the way, were _very nicely calibrated._ And they were a work-in-progress… Oh, SHIELD knew just how to draw me in: You don’t just _give_ me the new piece of tech, you give me the specs for it too, let me make adjustments, get it to where I feel like it really belongs to me. And what a piece of tech too. There were bugs, yeah, but god, the _potential_. I had those things perfect, by the time we were done. They were controlled by my _mood_ (almost). Get Loki in there and I wanted to go rough on him, those things made him weak as a kitten, and without him even noticing. Get him in there and I wanted a fight, and he would be a real opponent, someone I could spar with, and take as good as I was giving.

And he never knew. None of it. He never knew the strength on those things could be changed, or that I was the one changing them. Because the Stockholm Syndrome started to work, see? Not nearly as much as it did later on, but yeah. I let him stand up and fight me. He took his anger out on me, same as he would do with his brother. I let him see he was doing me some damage, and I let him see me come back and do him more damage. And if I was weakened by him knowing it was the shackles that let me do it, that was nothing to the Jotunn thing, and how that weakened him…

 _Jotunn_ , by the way, is the Asgardian name word for Frost Giant. Plural is _Jotnar_ , as in, one Jotunn, two Jotnar. Loki hated being a Jotunn. It was the ultimate shaming thing for him. Frost Giants aren’t just another race for Asgardians, they’re literal monsters. Imagine finding out you were born a monster. And not even a good monster; Loki’s parents abandoned him when he was a baby, did you know that? They left him in an empty building to die, because he wasn’t a good enough monster… One of the many useful little factoids I picked up, while I was _solving SHIELD’s problem._

…Yeah, Loki hit me… That first time I went to him, and more times after that. The first time, I hadn’t really worked with the shackles yet, I didn’t know what to expect. He hit hard. They weren’t really tight shackles, I mean, there was a long chain on those things. SHIELD’s idea, again, of course. Because you can’t _shame_ somebody by shooting fish in a barrel. It’s got to look like an even fight. He hit me hard, and it hurt, and he drew some blood, and you could see the satisfaction in his eyes when he did it. He _liked_ hurting me, see. That’s part of why I was able to make it okay for me to do the stuff I did to him.

I didn’t fuck him that first time, though. That wasn’t SHIELD’s idea, it was mine. And it also wasn’t really an _idea_. It was more like a weakness, a weakening of the flesh, in places where it’s got to be hard for things like that… But of course I’d never solved a problem with my dick before.


	3. The Monster Parents Tell Their Children About at Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Odin: “Why do you twist my words?”  
> Loki: “You could have told me what I was from the beginning-why didn't you?”  
> Odin: “You're my son-I wanted only to protect you from the truth.”  
> Loki: “Because I-I-I-I'm the monster parents tell their children about at night? Well, it all makes sense now, why you've favored Thor all these years…”  
> – _Thor_ (2011)

”Go in there and _fuck_ Loki. Go in and _fuck_ him hard…” People don’t _tell_ you to fuck your enemy very often. They don’t _tell_ you it’s going to provide intel, the best intel… Everyone knows how we get intel, right? I mean we might not like to talk about it, but we know. You bring a guy in, you slap him around, maybe you scare him a little. Then you go and you check everything he tells you. You don’t let him out until you get the truth.

Hitting someone is not easy. …Okay scratch that. Hitting someone when you’re not angry isn’t easy. I don’t know about you, but me, I have problems getting enough force behind my arm unless I’m mad, because you need a lot of force, you need enough to make an impression. And me, I always want to hold back. I had to really _work_ on myself, the whole time on that black site, to keep myself from holding back.

But it was nothing to what I had to do before I could fuck him. Look, contrary to what you might have heard, _The Stark_ is not some all-powerful fucking machine. _The Stark_ likes consent, he likes willing participants, and…

That wasn’t really what it was. Because Loki was willing there, after a while. He got to where he was very willing, scary-willing (because it was all part of pleasing _me_ , see). And Little Stark? You know, my “little brain”? Little Stark would respond to all that willingness, god help me, he responded every time, once we got that, but Big Stark? I was still having reservations when the whole thing was over. Hell, I’m still having reservations now. And I’m still no closer to understanding why I’m having them.

I think that’s part of why I had to tell someone about this. I think it’s about _understanding_ what happened. And I don’t know, I’m not good at talking to regular psychiatrists (and Bruce already said, he’s “not that kind of doctor”.), but you’re a friend. I’m going to tell you what happened, all of it. I guess I’m hoping I can put it behind me after that.

…Yeah, Little Stark had his issues at first, I had to really work on him. _Had to_ , you understand, because Fury told me (and I believed him):

“Selvig,” he said… You know, the crazy-doctor? Guy that was co-opted by Loki during the invasion, and since then he hasn’t been right? You go see him, half the time you’re going to be going to a looney-bin anymore, because they’ll have him locked up there. He will be, as they say, _an involuntary resident_. And he won’t be wearing pants half the time. I tell you, you haven’t _lived_ until you’ve had a discussion about theoretical physics, and all the time you were trying not to look at some old guy’s doodle.

Selvig… Guy is crazy-smart (as well as just plain old crazy). And he knows history. And Fury says to me, “You have to understand ancient Norse culture, most of it came from the Asgardians,” and he tells me that the thing that was the most shaming to Norse men was taking it up the ass, that was supposed to only happen to women. And he tells me that SHIELD’s theory is the same thing is true for Asgardians… Spoiler alert: It is… Mostly… Actually I think for Loki, the whole Jotunn might have been just a little more shaming. But it’d be a close call.

“Go in there and _fuck Loki raw,_ ” Fury said, “because the sooner we crack him open, the sooner we get our intel, and this whole thing will be over.”

And it occurred to me, I said, “What are you going to do with Loki then?” I’d been thinking about it, see. I didn’t want to think that maybe SHIELD had been short-sighted enough that they wouldn’t realize he was going to be a loose-nuke after we were done with him. Because he was. Because what was Thor going to do if it got back to him that we’d been fucking with his brother, and what if Loki decided to hold a grudge later on, and where was he going to go, and who was going to take him in? You think closing down Guantanamo is hard? (And spoiler alert again, I don’t think there should ever have _been_ a Guantanamo. You just don’t do that, you don’t take neutrals and torture them until they turn into enemies. …But of course Loki was never a neutral.)

“What are you going to do with Loki?” I said. “How are we going to be able to let him leave?

And Fury says, “If you do this right Stark, he’s not going to want to leave…” And I saw right there that SHIELD’s plan was that _I_ was going to take care of Loki _forever_ …

One more of the things that used to get in my head, and get in the way of Little Stark doing his job.

…So as I was saying, I was supposed to _shame_ Loki… I was already doing a pretty good job of that. I’d go in there. And he was a _mess_. Jotunn-blue, flickering in and out with Asgardian-normal, and his clothes… Because that was one of the other things he managed with his magic. You saw the footage of him changing clothes there in Dresden, right? How it was all magic, all an illusion? Without his magic working, he wasn’t able to do that of course, and I’d go in there, he’d be wearing those same rags he was wearing when I first got there, and his hair would be even more of a mess. …And there’d be dried blood on his face from whatever I’d done to him the day before… I never let him even wash his face, once, until he was broken. That was part of SHIELD’s instructions too.

…I’d go in there, I’d say, “Hi, Frosty.” Maybe I’d make some kind of a joke about how his magic wasn’t working, and I could see underneath his mask.

“You want to talk about masks?” This was the response he made the first time (before I’d made any progress with the _breaking_ ). “You, who hide behind a suit of armor to fight?”

He said it, and I flashed on just how _defenseless_ I‘d been in New York. I thought about falling out of that window, how the ground looked as it came up underneath me, and how it was like I could _feel_ the impact, before JARVIS finally got to me with the suit. I thought about going through the portal, and how close I came to dying, when I came down. God, I thought about all that stuff. Came in handy for adding anger when it came time to hit him.

…Not that I let any of that show when he said it, of course. “You see me hiding?” I said…

A lie. I don’t know if I’d figured it out then, but it was a lie. I _was_ hiding of course, behind the Doom-tech shackles, and behind the fact that I could calibrate them. We were all hiding something at that black site I think, me, and Loki, even Fury, maybe. The only difference was that some of us got to keep on hiding it.

“…You see me hiding?” I said. “I’m right here, this is my true face.”

And Loki said something. I think he said, “I’d like to rip that face right off you.”

I said, “Go ahead, try,” and then we had another fight. It all served for getting Loki closer to where I could break him.

…But we were talking about when I fucked him, weren’t we? The _first_ time I fucked him.

The first time Fury said to do it, I said no. He looked me up and down in that slighting way he has, and said, “Your father could have done it.” This was his assessment, that I wasn’t doing it because I couldn’t do it… We won’t talk about his assessment of my character, that I should happen to think that my father was a better man than me. …I said no because it wasn’t the right _time_ yet. I wanted Loki to understand that he couldn’t get away, when I fucked him. I didn’t think he would understand that at that point.

But then the time came that he was ready. He was starting to cave just a little… That was the first day that we brought him water and let him wash himself. And I made it clear to him that he got that for being a _good_ boy, and that if he obeyed me some more, he would get more good things.

But then I came in and I was ready to fuck him. Naturally he put up a fight about that, and he was like, “No,” and, “If you think…”

“What are you going to do about it, Frosty?” I said. “Gonna do some _magic_?” And he did. He managed a little spell. There were sort of half-formed illusion-Lokis all over the cell for a minute, and he managed to bring the temperature in there down a few degrees. Made getting my wang out a little bit chilly.

I was like, “Ha. Your magic’s pathetic…” And I saw something in his eyes… I saw tears in his eyes along with the anger, and I _felt_ something… There was shame in me, and guilt, all these emotions, and I had to fight them, just to do my job.

“…Your magic’s pathetic,” I said. “Try and stop this, magic-boy.” And I pulled my wang out… My hard wang. …And I hauled him up, shoved his face up against the nearest wall. And I ripped his pants down…

Later on of course, I had to make him do that stuff himself. It was part of the domination, you understand, part of the Stockholm Syndrome. Later on I had to make him obey me, and not just that, I had to make him _want_ to obey me. That first time was just about showing him I could do it.

And I brought plenty of lube along. I wasn’t out to cause irreparable pain or anything (plus fucking a dry ass _hurts_ ). I was _dominating_ him, you understand, I wasn’t torturing him.

And I took him. I went in there fast… And he was screaming and yelling the whole time. He was like, “You will _die_ ,” and, “I will _kill_ you,” and, “You miserable, mortal _worm_.” He was saying all this stuff, just all this angry stuff. …I went in there fast, but then I took my time about getting myself off…

_Just_ myself that time. I didn’t start making him get off too until later.


	4. If I Were Iron Man, I'd Have This Girlfriend...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony: “If I were Iron Man, I'd have this girlfriend who knew my true identity. She'd be a wreck. She'd always be worrying I was going to die, yet so proud of the man I've become. She'd be wildly conflicted, which would only make her more crazy about me...”  
> – _Iron Man_ (2008)

The weird thing with Stockholm Syndrome is how fast it resolves itself once it resolves itself. It’s like… Listen, how old were you when you got Math? Like what? Ten? Twelve? Remember that? One day you were doing stupid math sheets, because your teacher said, “Do this, do that,” you were counting how many froggies were on the log or whatever, and the next day… It’s like a light turning on, right?

Yeah, same thing with Loki. I just handled it like a job, okay? You go in, you slap him around… And the _look_ on his face would be the same, every day it would be the same look. You saw the footage from when the Widow “reoriented” Barton, right? Remember how he looked right before she did it? And we were all saying that was because of the Tesseract, but I’m here to tell you, it’s not. You deprive somebody of sleep, you deprive them of food, and rest, and… I don’t know. Dignity maybe? There’s lots of ways of eating somebody up from the inside, and the results look just the same for all of them.

Loki had _that look_. That, “I haven’t eaten or slept in 36 hours…” Because he hadn’t, of course. “…I’m going on adrenaline alone, and it’s _eating_ me,” that’s the look he had. Because _I’d_ put it there.

But for a long time I didn’t see any results at all. I’d go in there, and I would have to _make_ myself go in. Because Stockholm Syndrome doesn’t work unless you’re a real bastard about it, and whatever my ex-girlfriends might say, I’m not a real bastard kind of a guy. Whatever Pepper might say…

Does she blame it on me? Have you talked to her, and does she blame it on me? I wish she wouldn’t blame me, that thing was doomed from the start, it wasn’t my fault. 

Only it was…

You know what I told her one time? I don’t remember it exactly, it was something about how I was a superhero, I should have a girlfriend waiting at home, and she’d always be scared for me, but at the same time she would be so proud. God, I can be a bastard, huh? I mean, talk about your selfish pricks… Because it was all about _me_ then… The whole time, it was all about me, I never once even thought about her.

It was also just one more time when I was putting a shield up there, I was protecting poor, fragile Tony Stark with a new Mommy, like, “Oh, here’s the billionaire playboy, his mom’s dead, so he’s going to get himself another one.” Yeah, I don’t blame her for leaving.

Of course she didn’t have to fuck Happy…

I mean, of all people. _Happy?!?_ Why not just do it with a golden retriever?

…Okay, yeah. I used to go in there hating myself. I don’t know why I talk so much about how _Loki_ looked, because I’ll bet I looked the same way. And Fury did too. We weren’t sleeping so well either, and we weren’t eating. It takes a lot out of a guy to keep your levels of brutality high enough, and for long enough, that you’re going to see results. I mean, we’re not Nazis. And Jesus, it took a _long time_ before we saw the results. And I’d go in there…

Me, I’d go in. Fury might talk a good game about, “this is a team effort, we are working together here Stark,” but did he have to work with Loki? Mind you, there was a reason. Intel from SHIELD was that I was the one, just me, I was the only one who was going to be able to crack him. You ever stop to wonder why?

Believe me, I did. And at first I thought it was because of that talk we had that day in the penthouse. I kind of opened the floodgates there, is what I thought, because I started a conversation with him. “Here, have a drink,” I said, and for a minute it looked like he was really considering it, and for a long time I thought that was why it had to be me in the cell with him.

…No, that’s not true. It didn’t take me long to realized the Widow did the same thing, when she pried the intel out of him about why Bruce was there. Both of us same thing: Standard interrogation procedure, where you get the subject to relax, and they start spilling everything. Didn’t stop me _saying_ that’s what I thought of course, and I kept telling myself that… Why? I’ll tell you why, it was because it kept me from having to admit the truth to myself.

Because the reason why it _had_ to be me… And believe me, I had to really struggle with myself before I’d accept this. …The reason why I was the _only_ one who could do it, out of all the men SHIELD could have called on… The reason, for that matter, why it wasn’t me on the outside, feeding lines to Fury through a wire, and then recording all the info as Loki spilled it? _It’s because underneath, we’re both exactly alike._

Me and Loki, I mean.

These words don’t go past the walls of this room, you got that? You tell no one, and if you do say something… Well let’s just say I’m valuable enough now, and to enough people… I don’t like threats. I mean, I really don’t like them. Let’s not make this a threat-situation, okay?

…Yeah, me and Loki… It was one day when I was recalibrating the shackles, that’s when I flashed on how much we had in common. My tech was my shield, his tech took away his shield, that’s what I thought about first. Then I thought about how the whole point of the shackles was that they retarded his magic. As in, these were skills that _he’d_ learned, to protect _himself_ , and we were taking them away from him. Who was it said that magic is just Asgard’s version of tech?

And I went in there that day… Loki was still in resistant-mode, but you could see it was wearing thin around the edges. I remember looking at him… As in, it took me a minute before I was able to do what I’d gone in there to do, at first I was just looking at him… God, but he looked _bad_ that day. He was cleaner, because he’d cooperated a couple of times… He’d cooperated a little, a couple of times. Not much. …Mostly what he looked was angry, and tired, so very, very tired, like he was worn right down to the edge. And all of a sudden I flashed on when the suit failed on me, when I was coming out of the portal. I remembered what it had been like, falling, in free-fall all the way down… And I thought about how the first thing I remembered after that was Hulk shouting in my face, how it didn’t feel like a rescue, it felt like I was about to be destroyed.

It was just little tiny, fragile me, and Hulk, who could have squashed me with one fingertip… You know, it occurs to me, I’ve got one more thing in common with Loki, don’t I? Because we both went one-on-one with the Hulk.

…Yeah, I thought about that, how underneath all his magic, Loki was just this fragile, vulnerable little child. He was a weakling underneath that, just like I’m a weakling… You tell this to anyone, like, you breathe a _word_ of it… to _anyone_ … Don’t put me in a position where I have to doubt your loyalty is what I’m saying, okay?

Anyway, it made it harder, but you know, in another way, it was easier for me after that, too. Because there is _noplace_ in the world for weaklings, sooner or later they’re always going to get destroyed. And after I broke him down, Loki was going to be able to build himself back up…

There are some logical flaws to that, yeah. I still haven’t thought through all of them. I’m not telling you about what makes sense though, I’m not even telling you about what I think now. I’m telling you what I thought then, and back then I was just glad to have a motive that would keep me going in and doing what I had to do.

And I went in. I went in that day, a lot more days after that, before I finally broke him. “Kneel,” I’d say, and he’d go, “No,” and then I’d hit him. Or I’d go, “Up against the wall,” sooner or later he’d be up against that wall. I’d make him do what he had to do, to get Little Stark on board, or maybe he would be on board already. Everything’s a habit, including sex. My body got so it was used to the situation, and then after that doing it got a lot easier.

And Loki’s body, bone-thin, shifting, blue/white/blue/white… You know, I knew I’d broken him the first time he cried? He held off for… Jesus, I don’t know how long it was. You lose track in a situation like that, when you’re in a remote area, and cut off from everyday life and everything…

That’s one more reason I don’t blame Pepper for leaving. I really was gone _a long time._

…One day I went in there though. I made him get naked, hauled him up against the wall like usual. I was out, and I was ready to give it to him hard…

He was turned away, you understand. Let me give you a picture: It would be him with his ass bare, his ragged pants on the floor around his ankles, and he would be facing the wall. A lot of times I would be gotten off before I even looked at his face, and then after I was done that’s when I would make him turn around so I could service him.

This time, he was facing the wall, and I noticed something. I saw his shoulders shaking, not a lot you understand, just a little. I turned him… God, he fought me on being turned around, and when I did have him turned around, that’s when I could see why.

Because there were tears running down his face. Think about that a little. Think how it feels to have your dignity ripped away like that. When was the last time it happened to you? I don’t remember the last time it happened to me. When I was having the panic attacks? Maybe? But I was able to get away then. There wasn’t a single time when I had to stand there and be shamed in front of somebody. And there I was, shaming Loki, and he saw it.

Of course SHIELD had a protocol for that too. “Be kind to him when he breaks,” Fury told me, and you know why?

This gets gruesome: You’d think it would be because you’re trying to force obedience, right? Because meaningless cruelty isn’t the point, the point is to _train_ him? That’s not it.

The idea is, that the kindness makes him cry _more_. And you’re there, you see the whole thing, and he _knows_ you’re seeing it. God, the feelings he must have had inside, all that ugly, toxic mixture of anger, and shame, and gratitude, because even though I was shaming him, I was still taking care of him. And SHIELD said for me to let him stew in all that.

“Take care of him, Stark,” that’s what Fury said. “Give him everything he needs, don’t leave until he’s finished crying,” and so that’s what I did. And I held him in my arms, and I stroked his tangled, dirty hair, while he cried. Then when it was all over… He was starting to fall asleep before he finally finished crying. …After that, I got up and left. And I left him alone in there, and I didn’t go back for a full 24 hours. That was SHIELD protocol too, to give him time to think about what happened.


	5. Peace Means Having a Bigger Stick Than the Other Guy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony Stark: “Well, Ms. Brown. It's an imperfect world, but it's the only one we got. I guarantee you the day weapons are no longer needed to keep the peace, I'll start making bricks and beams for baby hospitals.”  
> Christine Everheart: “Rehearse that much?”  
> Tony Stark: “Every night in front of the mirror before bedtime.”  
> Christine Everheart: “I can see that.”  
> Tony Stark: “I'd like to show you firsthand.”  
> Christine Everheart: “All I'm looking for is a straight answer.”  
> Tony Stark: “OK, here's a straight answer. My old man had a philosophy: peace means having a bigger stick than the other guy.”  
> Christine Everheart: “That's a great line, coming from a guy selling the sticks.”  
> – _Iron Man_ (2008)

Biggest takeaway I got from Loki: Asgard’s best weapons are tech-weapons. Big things, like the Destroyer. You saw the footage from New Mexico, right? You remember the robot-thing Thor fought? …And the Tesseract, and the Infinity Glove, it’s all tech, see, only they call it magic, and you use spells… That you can _learn_. …That’s how you run that shit is with spells.

And Loki was all like, “Oh, of course _you_ couldn’t do it, you’d be too weak, any mortal would…” He was broken by then you understand, and he was regretful. He used to offer to do it for us, like he’d take control of all that weaponry and he’d use it for us. I’d let him talk, of course, because I was supposed to encourage that kind of thing. I knew there was no way SHIELD would ever trust him to control anything, but I didn't say anything, and I don’t think Loki knew it yet then.

I’m trying to keep this all chronological for you, okay? Because I have to tell it for the sake of my soul (if I have one), and I have to tell it _to_ someone, and I can’t use Loki, for obvious reasons. And I won’t talk to SHIELD…

Listen, you think I don’t know what you’re thinking right now? You’re thinking, “Oh Tony, where are your _values_? What happened to the man who would walk away from …whoever, and who would throw away his whole livelihood, if he had to, to protect his values?” You’re thinking, “You walked away from the Defense Department when you found out how they were using your weapons, but you can’t walk away from SHIELD?”

I wasn’t there for SHIELD. It was… I don’t know why it was. You’ve got to understand, Fury’s not SHIELD. I mean, he works _for_ them, but he’s not a robot, and he understands that we’re not robots either. You can work for Fury and still disagree with him, so I guess you can work for SHIELD…

I don’t work for SHIELD. I don’t really work _for Fury_ either. I work for myself. Tony Stark is a free-agent, I will consult, but…

You know sometimes I wish we _didn’t_ break Loki? Because there were times… Jesus, I don’t know what it was. Sometimes I would be talking to him, and it was like he was the only one in the world that made sense, like it was just him and me against the world. I’d think that, and it would really take me by surprise when I remembered, “It’s Stockholm Syndrome, _of course_ he thinks like you, Stark.” I’d realize he was just parroting my opinions, because I’d trained him to parrot my opinions, that I’d have to _punish_ him if he ever stopped parroting my opinions again, and I’d feel…

Well I’d feel sad, but it was more than that. I’d feel… I guess you could say it was regret that he wasn’t himself any more, but you know what I really felt?

 _I wanted it to be real,_ that’s what it was. I wanted _that_ Loki to be the real Loki. Because we understood each other. We thought alike, and we understood each other, and I’d really have to stop myself to avoid getting caught up in the illusion.

That was when I started having problems with Pepper. Because I did get to call her sometimes. I used this fucked-up computer that was all we had at the black site. You know me, I like _new_ tech, SHIELD’s stuff always seems out-of-date to me, but this one? I don’t know when this one was from, like from the 70’s maybe? Only somebody had hacked it with 21st century capacity? Like something steampunk, okay? 

…I’d Skype Pep with the steampunky rigged-internet they had on that steampunk old computer in there, and I’d talk to her… I’d try to talk to her… It was probably my fault.

All the time she would be talking, and I’d be thinking about Loki. I’d be thinking about _my_ Loki, the one I’d broken and remade in _my_ image, the one that thought like me, and talked like me… And I’d _know_ it wasn’t fair. All the time, I’d be thinking, “I’m comparing her to somebody who’s not real, no one could live up to…”

I’d made Loki over, you understand? I’d changed him from who he was, into…

And I never even meant to, there’s the real kicker. I was there to get information, I wasn’t even following my own plans. The whole thing was scripted for me. SHIELD told me what to do, and I just did it, but after I’d done it?

Christ, I _liked_ the Loki I’d made. And I had to keep reminding myself he wasn’t real, and that would get in the way… _He’d_ get in the way, but he wouldn’t mean to, because Jesus…

It was about that time I started feeling sorry for him, too. Which I totally never meant to do. I mean, I knew who he was. This was Loki. Underneath it all, he was the same remorseless killer as ever. You saw the footage from Stuttgart, right?

…Didn’t I ask you that before? And you said you saw it. You know the part that’s always gotten to me the most? Not the way he just knocked people out of the way like they were bugs. And that speech to the assembled multitudes? That was just crazy-talk, that was bagful-of-cat stuff.

You know what got me? The part where he just takes that guy’s eye. Christ, just think about that. He just grabs that guy, he drags him over… Just bang, pow, zap… You read the medical reports from afterward? _Don’t_ , they don’t make good reading.

…Yeah, so I would lose track of Natural-Born-Killer-Loki. I’d have to keep reminding myself, and even so…

But we got _so much information_ out of him. You wouldn’t believe the information we got out of him, all this stuff, how to take down Asgard… Not that we ever would. …How to stop Thor. We got credible intel on how to destroy Odin-Allfather, and all this stuff about Thanos, and about who the Chitauri were, and _where_ they were, and all this…

Like I was saying, Asgard is way more of a tech-place than they like to pretend. You can call it magic, or you can call it coding… Call it whatever you like, scripted prompts are scripted prompts. You learn the code to run it, and a piece of tech is yours, you can do what you want with it. Loki taught me the code for all of Odin’s weapons that he knows how to use, and all his talk about, “Oh, a mortal is too weak”?

Yeah, a _mortal_ is too weak…

We’re getting into touchy territory here, aren’t we? I mean, I guess it’s pretty obvious this is stuff I didn’t tell SHIELD… Didn’t tell Fury either, not most of it. …I’m only telling you because you know me, okay? This is stuff you’re going to figure out whether I tell you or not, and I’d rather you heard it from me.

I’m not taking anything that’s not mine… Hell, _taking_? I’m not _taking_ anything, if anything, I’m _giving_ … If Thor were to turn unfriendly, or if someone else from his world… If Odin-Allfather ever decides that he’s going to deign to notice our existence… Talk to Dr. Foster, if you want to know what _he_ thinks of us, what most of Asgard thinks of us, for that matter. …If one of _those_ Asgardians who think of us as lower than goats ever decides to come down and throw his weight around, we’re going to have to be ready. Who do you think is going to do that? Spoiler Alert: Not Fury, with his steampunk SHIELD-technology.

…Some Asgardian comes down and starts throwing his weight around… Or if it’s more than one, say, and if they’re hostile, or if someone brings in an army from one of the other realms Loki told me about… We’re going to need to match force for force when that happens, and it is going to happen eventually, so someone needs to know how to do that. Well, I know how to do that.

Thanks to Loki and my own brain, I know how to do that. I don’t feel afraid telling you about it, because you’re a friend, you won’t go away and start telling all my secrets. Besides, you know me well enough to know I will also stop anyone who tries to steal _anything_ without my permission…. My _express_ permission… DNA coding? Ha. We _laugh_ at your antiquated DNA coding here. Me and JARVIS. _We_ laugh. Spoiler Alert: If (or when) Asgard comes, it will be JARVIS who is stopping them. He’s strong enough to run their tech, and he’s coded for most of it now.


	6. You Can be More...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rhodey: [scene where lounge music is playing and Rhodey and Tony are drinking as a stripper pole comes out of the floor for the stewardesses to dance around] “That's what I'm talking about, when I get up in the morning and I'm putting on my uniform you know what I recognize? I see in the mirror that every person with this uniform on, GOT MY BACK!”  
> Tony: “You know, I'm not... I'm not... like you... Aren't you just a little distracted right now?”  
> Rhodey: “You don't have to be like me, but you can be more and you just don't see it. No I can't be distracted right now!”  
> – _Iron Man_ (2008)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to Blackbird-y for betaing this chapter. She is always good at noticing typos and grammatical weaknesses, and this time she was nice enough to help me with some larger issues as well. If this pleases anyone, please give her a lot of the credit. If you don't like it on the other hand, you should probably blame me.

Well at the end of the whole thing, I knew what we were going to do, okay? I mean I played it like, “This is Fury’s idea, this is SHIELD’s idea,” but…

Yeah, I could _play_ it like that, but I wasn’t fooling myself. But come on, what was I supposed to do? Is Thor going to stay on Asgard forever? And when he comes back… Him and that attitude of his: Family comes first, no matter where you are, no matter what’s happened, no matter what your brother did…

…Yeah, we had our window of opportunity, you know what I mean? Thor thought Loki was dead… He thinks he’s dead. So he’s got to _stay_ dead, see? He’s _got_ to, if we want any chance at all of keeping this thing hushed up, and it’s got to stay hushed up…

I think it would actually have been easier if we’d killed him. But we ruled that out right away because… Well for one thing, I’m not sure we could kill him. I mean I know Asgardians can die, but I’m not sure… I mean we threw our _best_ at him in New York. He went up against the _Hulk_ , and that didn’t kill him.

And we thought about using nukes… Only Jesus Christ, and you want to talk about “collateral damage”? I mean god, this way only one guy got hurt. …And it’s not even real hurt. I mean come on, Stockholm Syndrome, okay? Remember? I mean yeah, it hurt having to leave him like that, and I guess it hurt him too… It _did_ hurt. And I was walking away… God, I heard him the whole way out of there, and he was crying and pleading. He was like, “Tony, what did I do? Tony, please tell me, Tony please, just punish me, Tony.” Oh god…

But he _is_ going to wake up from it. I mean sooner rather than later: One fine day, not so very long from now (in Asgardian terms), he’s going to wake up, he’s going to be Loki again. As in he’ll be _real_ Loki, as in, an _enemy_. As in he was our enemy, he’ll wake up one day and he’ll be our enemy again.

See, what I did? That I hated doing? That still haunts me, I mean like I will literally wake up some nights, and that’s all I can think about? See, it _had_ to be done, okay? Because the Stockholm Syndrome is going to wear off one way or the other. Because it won’t last. And Asgardians lifespans are… Oh Jesus, I have _no idea_ how long those guys live. Loki told me one time…

One time toward the end of the whole thing. After I was a friend, and sometimes Fury still had to play bad-cop, but most of the time we didn’t even need that. …After Loki was telling us basically _everything_. We were all relaxed together, we were really comfortable by then. And I had SHIELD’s playbook, and I knew what a fake it was, but even I was getting sucked into it? And if I was? 

…Anyway, back then, when Loki really believed we had something together, and I was even buying into it some of the time too, and that’s when we had this talk. And Loki _said_ , as in this was word-for-word, he said that Asgardians can live for ten thousand years, or more (that’s if they get some kind of apples, I forget what kind), and his people? …The Frost Giants, you know, the Jotuns, as they call them? Loki said no one’s got any idea how long they can live, because nobody’s ever cared enough to find out. 

Essential takeaway here? Asgardians don’t die unless you kill them, or Jotuns either (as far as we know). And remember me saying we didn’t _want_ to kill Loki? Because there’d be fallout from the nukes?

That’s why we decided to seal him up like we did. And it was the nuke thing that gave me the idea. I got to thinking that: Well, we have to seal up nuclear waste, right? That’s how we keep the world safe? And I got to thinking, we could seal Loki up the same way. And I did it… Oh god, I did it…

You know you _can_ seal off your guilt feelings? I’m not saying I should have even had guilt feelings, because I shouldn’t. Because Loki was an enemy. I mean excuse me. Did _we_ go over there and force him to come try to take over the world? Did we _force_ him to bring an army against us? I hope you’re not going to pretend he was brainwashed then, are you? …Yeah, he was an enemy. He used weapons against _us_ first, all we did was finish the job. But I did feel guilt. Because you know, like I said…

I’m the first one to tell you, it was just me being crazy. I bought into that whole bullshit Stockholm Syndrome thing as much as Loki did, and I didn’t even have brainwashing for my excuse, it was just me being dumb. After that, yeah, I felt guilt, and it hurt me whenever I would have to hurt him. And what we did to him at the end… God, do you know how many months it was before I could sleep again?

But you can block guilt feelings, and the way you do it is you just focus on the task at-hand. And the task of the hand was to seal him off… It was, you might say, a kind of a Loki Containment thing. And I did a damn good job, if I do say so myself. You remember me talking about those Doom-shackles? The magic-retarding ones? Remember me telling you all I learned while I was calibrating them? Well that came in handy. Plus I used a lot of the tech I’d developed while I was working on the 1.0. Thing’s got a JARVIS operating system… Not that Loki can access it, you understand. And I went way back in my files, I got the containment protocols we developed for the Jericho… You even remember the Jericho?

You do, don’t you? Because that was the one where you kept lecturing me… Remember, we took that trip together? You do remember, don’t you, because that was the one where you kept telling me, “Oh, you can do more, Tony, you _should_ do more.” And at first I thought I was doing that with the Iron Man suit, only lately I’ve been thinking…

Anyway, I used a lot from the Jericho protocols too… That containment job on the black site, that is my _best_ work ever. And I protected the future of the goddamn human race, for… Oh I don’t know, I’d say that thing’ll hold for two, maybe three thousand years? Give or take, and here’s the really good part: JARVIS in that thing is designed to update automatically whenever I update my JARVIS. I can keep making it better, see. Now I really am protecting humanity…

I’m protecting them _way_ better than I ever protected them before, and I’m the one that took care the offensive end of things too. Because remember, I’m the one who found out what we can do when Asgard attacks. I’m the one…

God, someday I am going to go up there, I am going to try out those weapons Loki told me about. I _know_ I can make them better, _all_ of them… Rhodey my friend, when have I ever _not_ been able to make a weapon better?

The thing I was doing wrong before, is I was doing it for profit. Now I’m doing it for the safety of humanity, and that’s really the whole point, isn’t it? Isn’t that what we all should be working for?

If only it didn’t have to involve collateral damage. If only…

You know, realpolitik. As far as interrogating someone goes, we went as easy as we could go, on Loki. No physical scars, and as for the psychological ones… If he even has psychological scars. …Loki’s still got thousands of years left to live, is what I mean. He _will_ get over what we did to him.

By the way, _I_ get to pick my successor to maintain the containment. Fury’s going to want to do it, but… You can imagine the kind of guy he’ll want in there, right? Total government-drone? Like an Army-guy? …No offense meant there, you understand.

It’s got to be someone smart, someone who can think outside the box. And they’ve got to be loyal to the human race, they’ve got to understand how important that is, how it’s really the only thing that matters. I was thinking Bruce, but he’d feel guilty, I’ll bet, and he’d probably end up sabotaging the whole thing. And Cap’s not smart enough… 

Dirty secret, but I wish it could be Loki. …You know, _my_ Loki, the Loki Fury and I made when we brainwashed him. He was so smart, and he was loyal too. God, he never had a thought, but what it was my thought too, and he has the lifespan to do it.

Crazy, huh? It’s the sleep deprivation, it’s got to be. Because yeah, that’s still going on, practically as bad as ever. I’m so desperate I’m about ready to give up booze. …Only you know, then what would I use to get to sleep at night?

By the way, have you heard from Pepper? She won’t take my calls. All I want to do is wish her… you know, tell her I hope she’ll be happy, etcetera. …With _Happy_. …Who apparently likes getting his boss’s sloppy seconds, I’m just saying.

I just want to tell her I don’t have any hard feelings, okay? I don’t _blame_ her, I understand why she did it, I was kind of distracted. Not like I am any more, but you know how women are. She’s made her choice, she’s not going to go back on it now, no matter what the evidence says. She’s with Happy now, I hope she’s very _happy_ with Happy. Me, I was always better off playing the field anyway.

And Loki’s locked away for good, so it’s not like I can be with him either. Oh well, it’s better that way. The Loki I loved, because I did love him, especially there toward the end. But he was never more than a fictional construct. He was just something I’d made, and sooner or later everything breaks, nothing you make lasts forever. …Anyway, he’s in there, and we’re out here. Me, you, the whole human race, we’re all out here, and protected from him. Because that’s what it means to be Iron Man: Me, protecting humanity, no matter what it costs me.


End file.
